The federal government has announced that it is reforming the regulations through which employers hire students for the Canada Summer Jobs program. It’s an effort to prevent government financial support from going to groups that oppose abortion rights and LGBTQ2 equality, and it comes after reports that various hardline anti-abortion groups have long been beneficiaries of the program.

Organizations applying for government support will now have to sign a statement guaranteeing that they support human rights in Canada. “To be eligible,” the new policy states, “applicants will have to attest that both the job and the organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights.”

The program itself — designed to give workplace experience and training to students aged 15 to 30 in non-profits, the public sector and small businesses — is well worth preserving. MPs decide on funding on an individual riding basis; most of the money is allocated to non-political groups. But there have been exceptions to that rule: more than $3 million has been channelled to anti-abortion organizations in the past five years. Most of that money (but not all of it) came from Conservative MPs’ offices.

One of the groups that has been particularly successful in gaining funding through the program is the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. This ground was responsible for the No2Trudeau campaign — which sent hundreds of thousands of flyers to Canadian homes containing deeply disturbing, bloody and graphic images of mangled fetal body parts.

Parents complained that their small children often saw the flyers first and were sometimes traumatized. Their protests were ignored. This militant organization also holds public displays in which it juxtaposes abortion images with those of the Holocaust and the lynching of African-Americans. It describes abortion as genocide.

The group’s communications director, Jonathon Van Maren, is a columnist for Lifesite News, which stated recently that Donald Trump’s opponents were “satanic” and is obsessed with sinister cabals and dark conspiracy theories.

It’s all rather simple. Nobody — thank goodness — is trying to prevent people from holding anti-abortion views and campaigning against abortion rights.

It’s also morbidly concerned with what it sees as the sinister social and political influence of homosexuality. Van Maren himself wrote that “LGBT activists are already hard at work rooting out heretics in politics, media, and academia.” He is now attacking the government over these changes to the summer jobs program, which should come as no surprise.

He wasn’t alone. Many Conservatives joined the pile-on. “What the Liberals are doing here is terrifying,” MP Candice Bergen tweeted. “No tax payers $ if you don’t believe/act the way the government dictates. Sounds more like China than Canada. Thought/ belief control by the State, in its worst form. What’s next for these organizations? Charitable status denied?”

Communist China routinely employs torture, ignores human rights and has executed more people than the rest of the world combined. When I respectfully challenged Ms. Bergen on Twitter over what she said, she refused to withdraw her comparison and labelled me an extremist.

Critics also have claimed that this is all an attack on religion. That’s disingenuous, to say the least. The new policy states that applicants’ “core mandate” must “respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights. These include reproductive rights and the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, race, national or ethnic origin, colour, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.”

In other words, while abortion rights are mentioned, so is freedom of religion. The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform and the other anti-abortion outfits that have received public financial support through this program are indeed mostly composed of ultra-conservative Christians — but the groups themselves are not specifically religious, and are not faith-based charities serving the needy. Countless religious people (myself included) are liberal in their views about life and sexuality and have nothing in common with the extreme anti-abortion culture.

In fact it’s all rather simple. Nobody — thank goodness — is trying to prevent people from holding anti-abortion views and campaigning against abortion rights. This is not China, Ms. Bergen.

What the government is suggesting is that it’s absurd for the public to directly fund and support groups that oppose the laws followed and the values held by the vast majority of Canadians. A very modest, very Canadian idea indeed.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

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13 comments on “Here comes another bogus moral panic over abortion”

I’m all for a woman’s right to choose abortion – up until a certain point in gestation. When the human baby in the womb a.k.a fetus is at a viable stage in the pregnancy – say 24 weeks and up – my pro-life views end there as an abortion limit. Unless the woman or child is in medical distress that is. The Government of today and yesteryear have all been burying their heads in the sand on this topic/subject for way too long when there is nothing in the Charter about it and when courts have repeatedly said over the years that it is up to the legislation to put something in place that does not infringe on other Charter rights and freedoms. There should be a line drawn somewhere in the gestational period where a child in the womb is protected and doing so when it becomes viable makes the most sense both morally and otherwise to me. How hard can that be !?

There’s not a lot to comment on here really. This is just evidence of the continued decline of the conservative zeitgeist into ever more extreme and self-serving narratives.

As a former card-carrying Progressive Conservative I believe we have reached that part of the aftermath where what remains is devoid even of the spirit of the original movement. To return to conservatism now would require more self-delusion than I could possibly muster.

We are in an era where being conservative means little more than whining about society’s unwillingness to let them control and belittle others through legislation and the direction program dollars, couched in the ever-present anger and obnoxious behaviour.

Never would I have imagined how negative and cynical and hateful conservatism would become. It’s downright pathological at this point, literally like a mental illness. But then they’ve been headed that way for some time now and I do wonder where it ends.

It’s high time that government funding of anti-choice “pregnancy care” centres and extremist groups such as the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform (CCBR) ended. The so-called “pregnancy care” centres disseminate misleading information on abortion, use scare tactics to talk women into continuing pregnancies and then encourage adoption. They promote themselves through misleading advertising that hides who they are (evangelicals) and their true purpose – to convert clients to Christianity and “save” their babies. They are not interested in women who wish to continue their pregnancies and need support. They are only targeting what they call “abortion-minded” women. For this they are granted charitable status, which is bad enough. Granting them taxpayer money for an operation that at best can be described as disingenuous and is often harmful to women by delaying health care is ridiculous. So kudos to the Liberals for ending this sham.

As for the CCBR – their anti-social extremist behaviour should not be rewarded with taxpayer funds. They do not have charitable status and are in fact a political group seeking to undermine fundamental human rights. If you are going to fund them, you might as well fund alt right groups. Or if you think that’s too extreme a comparison, funding the CCBR is like funding anit-vaxxer groups that also work against public health and safety. Would Canadians be happy to see their money frittered away on that cause?

Let these anti-choice groups function on their own. If they can garner enough public support and convince Canadians of their position, then so be it. The government never gave groups like the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League money to promote the repeal of abortion laws. CARAL was successful through grass roots support and without charitable status.

The problem with the left leaning parties is the heavy handed way they make peoplet submit to their way .
It really is becoming a dictatorship here in Canada either submit to our will or else. .
Imbrase our ideas or you are all sorts of names.
In the next few years we two different countries with a totally opposing views.
Trudeau has been raising taxes at a alarming rates. Taking away freedom of expression that doesn’t meet their standards.
Trump is a strong leader who is a lot things to many people but he is not weak.
How will the 2 countries be after the 2 years?

Hilariously ironic how Michael Coren curls up into a ball of offended blubber at being called extremist. When anyone respectfully challenges Mister Epiphany on Twitter, he utters a banal, adolescent ad hominem retort and blocks them posthaste.

Author

Michael Coren is a columnist and political commentator and the author of fourteen books. His most recent book is Epiphany: A Christian’s Change of Heart & Mind over Same-Sex Marriage. [email protected]